Received from NetGalley for review.
‘When I think back on that summer it’s always with a sense of having lost something fragile and fleeting, something I can’t quite name. We still go to the beach and always have good times, but it’s never quite the same.’
The Great Godden was not quite what I expected, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, finishing it easily within a couple of hours. Rosoff has crafted a brilliant coming-of-age tale, full of fleeting romance and the unexpected, over a heady, lazy summer.
The unnamed narrator takes us through a summer spent at a beach house with their family and friends that might as well be family. It begins as I would imagine – they’re a close and chaotic family, all happily doing their own thing with the beach house as a base. This is what they do, how they’ve spent their summer holidays for generations. But when two unexpected visitors, Kit and Hugo Godden, arrive, everything changes. Everyone is enchanted by Kit, suspicious of Hugo, and an odd atmosphere slowly creeps up on you; you’re sure something is going to happen, you just don’t know what and I spent the majority of the book trying to figure it out.
I was totally swept up in the mystery of it all, in the fleeting feelings of summer romances and raging hormones. I’m not sure if it felt a bit rushed, or if I just rushed through it, but this feels like a perfect summer read that is just the right mix of light and easy, with an undercurrent of something else.
Read: 21st April 2020
4/5 stars
Magic, Ink, and Stardust 